Amber House is a YA Magical Realism novel, starring Sarah Parsons, who comes to the titular house–a grand Maryland estate that's been in her family for three centuries–for her grandmother's funeral.
Sarah and her friend Jackson decide to search for the supposed cache of diamonds hidden somewhere on the estate–but soon the House comes alive. She discovers that she can see visions of the House's past, like the eighteenth-century sea captain who hid the jewels, or the glamorous great-grandmother driven mad by grief. Sarah grows closer to both Jackson and a young man named Richard Hathaway, whose family histories are each deeply entwined with her own. But when her ghostly visions start to threaten the person she holds most dear, Sarah must do everything she can to get to the bottom of the House's secrets, and stop the course of history before it is cemented forever.
This book was followed up by a sequel, Neverwas, which was then supposed to be part of a trilogy (later planned to be expanded into a tetralogy), but a tragic accident in the family put the series on an indefinite hiatus.
- Cool Big Sis: Sarah has a little brother, Sammy, whom she absolutely adores.
- Haunted House: What Sarah initially believes about the House before she finds out more about her powers.
- Hollywood Autism: Averted. Sammy is explicitly stated to be on the autism spectrum and is written very realistically.
The author's stated that he was a composite of several autistic boys that they knew, and tried very hard to write him as empathetically as possible. - Love Triangle: Sarah gets tangled up in one involving Richard (the Uptown Boy and son of a senator), and Jackson (the nice but mysterious boy carrying burn scars).
- Parental Neglect: Sarah has a shaky relationship with her mother, Anne, which only gets worse when they stay at Amber House after the funeral, and we learn that Anne had a falling out with her mother (Sarah's grandmother) years ago.
- Psychometry: The women of the Parson family developed psychic abilities living in the titular Amber House, with some seeing the past, and others seeing the future.
